After a five-years-in-the-making attempt to complete a modest wish-list of repairs at its park in Rustic Canyon, the city will receive an additional $150,000 from the state. City officials hope to use that money to make repairs left incomplete by high costs and inefficient management. The $150,000, unlike previous funding, comes from Prop. 12, which is managed by the state’s Department of Parks and Recreation. Conditions of that bond money require that the work it finances must be complete by the end of December, wrote Council District 11 Deputy Andrea Epstein who announced the news last week in an e-mail. The city has prioritized the following repairs (listed in decreasing order): restructure the sub-floor of the ceramics room, which the city considers a ‘public health priority’; construct a staircase from the edge of the parking lot to the lower picnic area; reconstruct the outdoor patio area, where tree roots have upended tiles; extend the internal fencing of the tennis court to prevent balls from going court to court; and replace a section of the fence along Latimer Road with a vinyl coated fence. It is unclear whether $150,000 is enough to pay for all of these planned changes, but the city plans to do as many as possible with the money. City officials called the new funds a boon for beleaguered construction efforts there. ‘It’s a win-win for everyone,’ said Neil Drucker of the Bureau of Engineering, who oversees much of the repair in the city’s parks. Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who is also chairman of the Public Works Committee, was decisive in helping the park receive the state funds, said Drucker. ‘Rustic Park is a beautiful place,’ Rosendahl told the Palisadian-Post on Wednesday. ‘Whatever we can do to make it a treasure for citizens, we’ll do. When we heard about the funding, we wanted to make sure it was available. It improves the quality of life of our constituents.’ A group of locals met for years as part of a Local Volunteer Neighborhood Oversight Committee (LVNOC), drafting their priorities for $500,000 of city bond money at the park. Among those priorities included installing an automatic irrigation system, resurfacing basketball courts, repairing the entry courtyard and replacing damaged tiles. But hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the only visible sign of the money was a handicapped-accessible public restroom, leaving all of the LVNOC’s priorities unaccomplished. Although still wary of city promises at the park, local residents considered the new funding a positive sign. ‘This is $150,000 we wouldn’t have had,’ said George Wolfberg, president of the Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association. ‘[City construction crews] are under the gun and they’re going to get moving on this–which is better than they’ve shown so far.’ Although construction will have to begin soon in order to qualify for the $150,000, city officials do not know when the LVNOC’s other priorities will be met. Last spring, the park was allocated $300,000 to complete its unmet goals. But construction there awaits a ‘reasonable’ bid from the city’s sole contractor, the General Services Department (GSD), said Drucker. He estimates that it will be one year before construction is fully complete. Drucker insists that many of the inefficiencies that have hobbled construction and inflated costs will not be repeated. ‘What we’re doing this time is we have a number of checks and balances,’ he said. ‘We’re going to closely watch the costs.’ —– To contact Staff Writer Max Taves, e-mail reporter@palipost.com or call (310) 454-1321 ext. 28.
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